12.12.15

For two years my mum had a
recurring nightmare in which the mirror at the end of the room, facing my
parent’s bed, would turn transparent and there would be a man standing behind
it. When redecorating, they removed the mirror from the wall, to find a hole behind
it, with a small empty room, leading to nowhere.

Got lost with girlfriend at
night in Waco, Texas. Roads were deserted. No people. No cars. Then saw one
lone person standing on the corner as I made a turn. I heard a friendly male
voice in the vehicle, as if sitting in the back seat, say to me, “You’re going
the wrong way.” I noticed I was, indeed, going the wrong way on a one-way
street so I did a U-turn. The road took me directly to the main highway. Asked
my girlfriend a bit later if she heard the voice too and she burst into tears
because she had been so freaked out by it she thought she was going insane or
something.

When my wife was six years old
she fell into a well. She couldn’t climb her way out and started to cry. She
heard a girl’s voice tell her not to worry and directed her to a group of
stones that were jutting out far enough for her to grab ahold. The voice told
her to climb out and she did.

When she got out there was
nobody around and she ran home. Told the story to her mother only to find out
that a little girl had drowned in that same well many years ago.

My friend was driving without
his glasses on in the middle of back country Maine one night. For those who
have never been, you drive hours without seeing civilization. Just trees and
trees. He was in a daze, when he saw something up ahead in the street. He
stopped, couldn’t quite make it out. It was moving. But moving very slowly. He
got curious, moved real close to it on his truck. “Is that a baby?” Sure
enough, it was a baby. He gets out of the truck, just stunned. Surely this baby
is abandoned. Walks over there, goes to pick it up. It’s a baby doll being
dragged by slowly by a string. He got out of there fast as he could.

A couple of years ago I was
out for a run with my dog. Over the fields behind my house. We came across this
old abandoned mansion. It hadn’t been lived in in at least fifteen, maybe
twenty years. The rich guy who owned it had went bankrupt and now the bank
owned the house.

I decided I’d take a look
through the house. It was pretty cool. Run down but it looked like someone had
left in a hurry.

I decide to head home. Once I
get back I go for a shower. Afterwards I walk into the kitchen and start to
make a sandwich. I bring it over to the table and there it is. A post-it note.
“You come into my house, I come into your house.”

Naturally I freaked out. Got
my dog and got out of my house. Phoned my parents who then passed it on to the
police. They said it was likely squatters and some guy had followed me home but
it was nothing to worry about.

That was the last we heard
about it. No way I’m ever going back to that house.

As kids, my cousin had an
imaginary friend. He called him “Bee-jebuh” (we never got around to how it was
actually spelled, but I’m spelling it the way he pronounced it.) He claimed
that his Bee-jebuh was a monster but he was a nice monster, and he would
occasionally tell him to do things. After a few weeks of this, he was told
never to talk of Bee-jebuh again.

Apparently, this name was
strikingly close to Beelzebub, so his mother (who is fairly religious) put a
stop to that. Now the creepy part. I was recently telling my girlfriend this
story. It was dusk, and we were in the car, parked, but the car was on. As I
told this story, the internal lights on the car came on, as if the door was
open, and both of our phone simultaneously went haywire. She forced me to stop
talking about it after that, and to never mention it again.

My dad used to live in a house
that had some weird things happen. Curtains moving, things not being where you
left them, remotes ending up in places that were impossible to reach. But never
anything violent or harmful. One week things started to feel different. The
whole house started to feel uneasy which was a new feeling despite the weird
activity. One day my stepmom and I were alone in the house and started to smell
burning matches. Which is an incredibly distinct scent. We walk around trying
to find where it was coming from and she eventually finds the source in the pantry.
It was a pile of burnt matches about 10 inches wide and 3 high. We were alone
in the house and were watching a movie together. No way it was either one of us
and the kitchen was just off the back side of the living room so we would’ve
heard if someone was there. Nothing nearly that profound happened again but you
can bet that we were out of there when the lease was up a month later.

A few years ago, I was in the
kitchen with my sister and my mom, and I saw this huge spider.
This thing was at least 8 inches in diameter, just sitting on the back of one
of the dining room chairs. I freaked the fuck out and pointed it out to my mom
and my sister. Neither of them saw the spider. I turn back to the spider, and
it’s right in front of me. “Can’t you see this??” I asked. As I’m looking at
this spider, they both say there is no spider there and that my joke isn’t
funny. That whole incident still bothers me.

When I was 16 I was home alone
and suddenly felt the need to check the doors were locked, like urgently. I
walked quickly to the front door and turned the lock just as a guy appeared on
the other side and tried to open it. It didn’t open because I had locked it a
millisecond earlier. I could see him because our door was partially tinted
glass, I’m not sure if he saw me. He immediately turned around and walked away.
WHO THE FUCK WAS HE?! He was early/mid twenties, really well dressed, black
suit. He didn’t try to knock, he just tried to open the door. Never saw anyone
like him again.

It’s crazy, but funny enough
that people always think I’m making it up, despite being able to
cross-reference with two other people with the same exact story.

When I was a kid, my brother
and I used to visit our cousins three hours away. One time our parents went out
and left my brother and I with my two cousins. The older cousin had something
else to do and so the three of us (probably 10-13 yrs old) were on our own. For
one reason or another we were in my aunt and uncle’s bedroom when I looked into
the living room and, clear as day, saw a pair of my uncle’s disembodied dress
slacks dancing away in the living room.

Obviously I freaked the fuck
out and called my cousin and brother over and all three of us witnessed it.
There’s no way it could have been a prank because the legs were moving and
dancing and everything. There was too much dexterity for them to be controlled
by a prankster.

To this day all three of us
can collaborate this story. My cousin, who is now a missionary, even swears it
happened. Despite the fact that it’s far outside the realm of her beliefs, when
we talk about it, she just takes a breath and says “….yeah, I remember those
dancing pants.”

I remember when I was in
Mexico with some of my cousins we started a bonfire outside an abandoned
warehouse. Reaching nightfall we got the fire going and we settle down around.
We talked and laugh and what not. It wasn’t till one of my cousins noticed an
odd human like figure standing in a distance. This person or thing was wearing
a blackened dirty white gown with their hair over the face looking down. We all
stood up and got behind the oldest cousin (two of my cousins and me) I remember
asking in Spanish who they were and what they wanted. The fact that it wasn’t
responding got us uneasy. Shortly afterwards it started to glide towards us. My
blood shot cold seeing that. We were in disbelief and frozen. Once we snapped
back we started running and screaming back to the ranch. No one know what that
was really nor did return there when night fell.

I did IT work for a gun range
that rented out guns for you to use on the range. As you might expect, there
were quite a few squirrely “Don’t Tread On Me” types in there at any given
time, so I always paid close attention to what was going on in the shop and
range. There were windows into the range, so you could see who was shooting.
One day I noticed a lady in there loading up, who I hadn’t seen come in. I
rebuked myself for my lack of vigilance and went about my business.

It happened again a couple
weeks later, and I resolved to keep an eye on the range, but she got out of
there without me noticing somehow. This pattern repeated several times over the
following weeks, until finally I heard about the lady that had come in a few
years back, rented a gun, walked into the range, and shot herself in the head.

This happened to my uncle
before he married my aunt and became part of our family. He lived with his
previous wife and two kids in a house for most of their lives, and his wife
suddenly became terminally ill and died a few months later. Throughout her
entire life, she was a very kind person, but she hated the green curtains in
their living room more than anything. She would apologize about them when
guests came over, talked about how much she hated them whenever they went to
home improvement stores, and tried to keep them out of view as much as
possible. I’m not sure why she or my uncle never got around to changing them;
could have been financial problems, distractions, couldn’t find ones they
liked, etc. But they never did. The green curtains remained.

The night she died, my uncle
and his kids spent the night with her in the hospital and returned home the
next morning. They said after being in the house in silence for about an hour,
those green curtains came crashing to the ground. My uncle and cousins didn’t
know whether to be absolutely terrified or laugh. They immediately threw them
in the garbage and later picked out new ones they thought she would like. I
have no doubt that she took it upon herself to finally get rid of those
curtains.

I moved to Huntsville about 5
years ago. Here in Texas, Huntsville holds the state prison so It’s creepy just
for that. Along side the prison, very very old houses remain. I dated this guy
for about a year and he lived in the row of old houses right off campus. He
lived at one end of the row in a house built in the 20s. Everyday as I walked
down to his house I passed a gorgeous white house built in the 1800s. Tall, 3
stories and sits on top a hill. It’s torn up and it has no windows or doors,
But I always found it fascinating and haunting at the same time. I hoped one
day the boarded up doors would be open so I could go explore. Well one day I
got my chance. The board was cracked open and we went right on in. Creeping in
from room to room everything was boards and nails and completely deserted and
falling apart, but Creepy enough, the only thing that remained in any of the
rooms were the clawfoot tubs. there were two downstairs and they were
beautiful. I almost fell through a couple of holes but I managed to make it up
to the 3rd floor. Again, a clawfoot tub sat deserted in the hallway. I made my
way around and landed in the final of the 15 rooms. The top left corner. It
looked out onto the street we had entered and it had a staircase that led to
the attic. As soon as I walked into the space (mind you, there are no doors) I
knew I had to leave. I can’t explain it but it became unusually cold for the
Texas weather the hair on my neck stood up. I felt like I needed to run. and I
did. Right back down the hall passing all the creepy tubs and out the door. I
didn’t return. Fast forward about three weeks, I worked for the campus hotel
and we were selling a Huntsville ghost hunting book which included houses from
around town. I worked the late 3p-11pm shift and no one was around so I read it
happily until I came across a story about that white house! According to the
previous owner, the house used to be a morgue. The clawfoot tubs that remained
in the house were the original tubs they used to drain the dead bodies in before
they prepared them. And it said sometimes people see a figure of a man who is
supposed to be the original owner in the “windowless window” up in that left
corner room looking out onto the street. Nope.

A few years ago, I lived in a
little cottage style house that was built in the 1920s. It was a charming house
and I loved it, but weird things happened in that house. The first thing we
noticed was that we couldn’t place anything made of glass on the counters in
the kitchen and turn our backs, because the jar would fall to the ground almost
instantly and shatter. I tried putting the jars on the backside of the
countertop, against the wall, but they would still somehow fall off and break
as soon as I left the room.

From the first month we moved
in, I would hear vomiting noises, coughing, and sobbing coming from the
bathroom. My roommate had stomach issues that year, and no one would answer
when I asked if everything was okay, so I just assumed she had the pukies and
wanted to be left alone. This went on weekly for about ten months, and one day
my roommate and I were hanging out and she asked if I was feeling okay. I said,
“Yeah, I’m fine, why?” “I heard you throwing up earlier this morning, and I was
worried about you. Why were you crying?” “…Uh… I thought that was you.” We were
the only ones home that entire week.

We realized that we thought
the other person had been sick and crying in the bathroom for the entire year,
but it was neither of us. We never figured out where the sounds were coming
from.

When I was about 9 or 10 some
of my family was in town, so naturally I had to give up my bed and sleep on the
living room couch. At some point during the night I awoke abruptly only to find
myself staring at a small boy. The kid was probably a little younger than I was
at the time, but the problem was I could see through him. He looked like what I
like to describe as an early 1900s paperboy, complete with the hat and socks up
to his knees. He was glowing a blueish color, he didn’t say anything to me, nor
I to him. I just kind of laid there looking at him and then he was gone. I
never say anything like that again, not in my house, not ever.

I was at home sitting on the
couch with a friend of mine and my mom leaves to go to the store. We’re hanging
out doing nothing in particular and my friend falls asleep sitting up, so I
take a picture with my new camera phone and show it to him, “Haha, you fell
asleep, what a dufus,” something to that affect. Two weeks later I’m going
through my pictures and I’m looking at it and I realize that someone is in the
other room just 10 feet away. Even weirder is that this person has the same
posture and stuff as my mom, same haircut (short and spiky) and whatever the
thing was, was very dark and facing the camera, because the eyes caught my
flash like a cat’s eyes. Just two brightish dots. The figure was in the
brightest room in the house so there’s no reason it should have been so
shadowy. I showed my friend in the picture, who knows my mom well and I don’t
say anything to him except, “Who is that in the dining room?” And very typical
of my friend, he sarcastically says, “Your mom, my god, don’t you know your own
mother when you see her?” “Uh, G, remember, she wasn’t home when I took this
picture?” And he just says, “Yeah…you’re right.” I didn’t push it further
because I know he’s a little superstitious and junk and he seemed a little
nervous. I looked at the pic constantly trying to figure it out and then one
day, it just disappeared.

One summer my brother went to
Ghana and came back with a bunch of souvenirs. He went back to school and left
them all with my parents. My parents used to live in a two story bungalow,
where my brother and I had bedrooms in the basement directly underneath theirs.
One night around 2 am, I woke up to hear heavy footsteps right above me… I
tried to ignore it and go back to sleep. Because he was such a loud snorer my
dad would sleep in my brother’s room as well. In the morning my dad asked my
mom what she was doing walking around at 2 am. She denied that she was, but I
backed up my dad because I heard it too. She continued to say it wasn’t her,
and the next night it was same thing… heavy footsteps at 2-3 in the morning. My
dad and I attempted to recreate the footsteps, used hard-steel boots, but
nothing came close to the sound.

I started having weird-ass
dreams. In them I felt awake and would see a big dark figure in the middle of
my room that would move closer to me, then when it would reach out to me I
would wake up to more footsteps. I once had friends over after a party, who all
between 2-3 am asked if there was someone in the house… I couldn’t really give
them a response other than “oh yea those are just the ghosts.”

Finally we decided to try to
move all the souvenirs my brother brought back, which included 6 African masks…
when we really looked at them, there were a few that were terrifying, like
really demonic looking, so we put them in the garage. This is what really got
me…. For the next two days, birds would fly into the glass of my parents’ bay
window in their bedroom and die. We had to pick up like 15 dead birds. It only
stopped when my dad got rid of the masks…

5.12.15

ØPure Socialism: You have two cows.
The government takes them and puts them in a barn with everyone else’s cows.
You have to take care of all the cows. The government gives you all the milk
you need.

ØBureaucratic Socialism: Your cows are
cared for by ex-chicken farmers. You have to take care of the chickens the
government took from the chicken farmers. The government gives you as much milk
and eggs the regulations say you should need.

ØFascism: You have two cows. The
government takes both, hires you to take care of them, and sells you the milk.

ØPure Communism: You have two cows.
Your neighbors help you take care of them, and you all share the milk.

ØReal World Communism: You share two
cows with your neighbors. You and your neighbors bicker about who has the most
“ability” and who has the most “need”. Meanwhile, no one works, no one gets any
milk, and the cows drop dead of starvation.

ØRussian Communism: You have two cows.
You have to take care of them, but the government takes all the milk. You steal
back as much milk as you can and sell it on the black market.

ØPerestroika: You have two cows. You
have to take care of them, but the Mafia takes all the milk. You steal back as
much milk as you can and sell it on the “free” market.

ØCambodian Communism: You have two
cows. The government takes both and shoots you.

ØMilitarianism: You have two cows. The
government takes both and drafts you.

ØTotalitarianism: You have two cows.
The government takes them and denies they ever existed. Milk is banned.

ØPure Democracy: You have two cows.
Your neighbors decide who gets the milk.

ØRepresentative Democracy: You have
two cows. Your neighbors pick someone to tell you who gets the milk.

ØBritish Democracy: You have two cows.
You feed them sheeps’ brains and they go mad. The government doesn’t do
anything.

ØBureaucracy: You have two cows. At
first the government regulates what you can feed them and when you can milk
them. Then it pays you not to milk them. Then it takes both, shoots one, milks
the other and pours the milk down the drain. Then it requires you to fill out
forms accounting for the missing cows.

ØPure Anarchy: You have two cows.
Either you sell the milk at a fair price or your neighbors try to take the cows
and kill you.

ØPure Capitalism: You have two cows.
You sell one and buy a bull.

ØCapitalism: You don’t have any cows.
The bank will not lend you money to buy cows, because you don’t have any cows
to put up as collateral.

ØEnviromentalism: You have two cows.
The government bans you from milking or killing them.

ØPolitical Correctness: You are
associated with (the concept of “ownership” is a symbol of the phallo-centric,
war mongering, intolerant past) two differently – aged (but no less valuable to
society) bovines of non-specified gender.

ØSurrealism: You have two giraffes.
The government requires you to take harmonica lessons.